Being in cryosleep was a strange feeling. One moment you were awake and the next, nothing. Instantly you fell into a dark, dreamless sleep with no sense of time and no sense of the world around you. And when you woke up it was like you had blinked and were suddenly somewhere else.
When Abigail Callaghan woke up with the paramedic standing over her she was disoriented. She had no idea what was going on, the last thing she remembered was colour. Colours so beautiful she couldn't describe them. Swirls of pink and blue and orange blending together to form fluffy clouds and intricate patterns. Then suddenly nothing. Just the blink of an eye and suddenly the paramedic was looking down on her asking her name.
"Abigail Callaghan," she answered.
"Alright Abigail, you're going to be fine."
Standing outside her home on a quiet street in San Fransokyo, Abigail sighed. Over her three days in the hospital she had gradually pieced together what had happened. She remembered launching into the Krei Tech portal, but everything else afterwards was put together from security clips and news stories.
After launching into hyperspace, a malfunction occurred in the technology causing the portals to be destroyed. In grief, her father had assumed her death and blamed Krei for his loss.
After that, she learned, her father sought revenge by stealing fourteen year old Hiro Hamada's microbots invention.
Her father had caused a lot of destruction and had even killed Hiro's brother. Collateral damage he had claimed. She had a lot of apologies to make on his behalf.
Stepping into her home, Abigail looked around. Her father's antics had left their house untidy, and then their absence for half a week had left the place begging to be cleaned up.
The newspapers were piling up on the kitchen table and the plants lined up on the windowsill were wilting. A fine layer of dust was beginning to cover the shelves and who knows what her father had left in the lab in the basement. She decided to start there, dangerous things could have been left alone in the lab.
Walking into the basement, Abigail turned on the harsh fluorescent lights. Squinting in the sudden brightness, she looked around. Tools, books, and spare parts littered the floor and the work benches. Abigail was confused. Her father was never so untidy and disorganized. He had always emphasized to her how important it was to keep her workspace tidy, so why wouldn't he keep his clean?
Walking further into the room, Abigail glimpsed a new machine in the corner, partly hidden in the clutter. It must have been added – or created – after the Krei Tech incident. She approached the white tube and considered the buttons and lights scattered on the surface of it. The machine made a quiet humming noise and an LCD display on the left side glowed green and read ENGAGED in large letters. The glass was frosted over with a thin layer of ice and a dark shape was vaguely outlined underneath.
Then it all made sense. The machine was a cryotube, similar to her pod she had been in in hyperspace, but this one looked more like it was meant to stay stationary than to actually go anywhere. Wiping down the glass, the body inside finally came into focus. A young man of about 20 lay inside with a peaceful expression on his face. He had short, black hair and a slender build. His pale skin and oval face made him seem strangely familiar to her, like he was someone she had met long ago and had forgotten with the distance of time.
Abigail thought hard. Where had she seen this face before? She tried to recall family members, friends, movies, and scholars. She considered the man's face and vague memories of a news story came to mind. Then the man's identity came to her so fast it made her dizzy. The news stories, the new building at SFIT, the front pages of the newspapers stacked on her kitchen table reading 'UNIVERSITY STUDENT DEAD IN EXPLOSION'. This was Tadashi Hamada. The Tadashi Hamada who had died in the fire was now in cryosleep in her basement.